What kind of ECU is needed for software-defined cars?

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It is no longer surprising that software defines everything, from software-defined networks to software-defined storage, from software-defined radio to software-defined computing. By building digital and standardized hardware resources, virtualization, flexibility, diversity and customization are achieved through software programming, and customized, dedicated, intelligent and customized services are provided to the outside world, realizing the deep integration of application software and hardware. In this way, hardware can be deployed once to meet all needs.


Today, the automotive industry also hopes to achieve rapid product upgrades and iterations through software definition. OEMs increasingly hope to provide differentiated services to the cloud market and deploy the latest features for cars through OTA updates, including improving driver comfort, enhancing car personalization, improving car power efficiency and even improving safety.


At the same time, the transformation of automotive electronic and electrical architecture from distributed to domain and regional control has already begun. By merging the functions of ECUs, the number of ECUs has been reduced, the development and verification costs have been reduced, and the wiring harness connections have been simplified.


NXP recently launched the S32Z and S32E real-time processors, which are respectively aimed at functional safety and domain/regional control and electric vehicle control and intelligent drive, and cater to the current trend of software-defined cars. As Ray Cornyn, senior vice president of NXP Semiconductors and general manager of the automotive control and network solutions product line, said, "S32Z and S32E are new processor series with key deterministic behaviors of safety MCUs, providing excellent giga-class core frequency, multi-application isolation and memory expansion functions, and are ideal for software-defined cars and cross-domain functional integration."


How to meet real-time domain control


S32Z and S32E meet the ASIL-D functional safety level. Their high-performance, non-interfering gigabit multi-core architecture can handle multi-task real-time processing and also integrates a network acceleration engine.


The new product integrates 8 Arm Cortex R52 real-time processors, dual-core lock-step Cortex M33 MCU and DSP/AI processor. In addition, it also integrates memory expansion such as Flash and LPDDR memory. The hardware security engine (HSE) supports secure boot, accelerated security services and key management.


S32Z and S32E support popular interfaces such as Ethernet and CAN. In addition, NXP has jointly developed CAN-XL interface technology with Bosch. In particular, S32E integrates 5V analog and I/O with complex timers, and can perform drive functions, so as to better cope with electric vehicle control and intelligent drive scenarios.


How to meet software-defined


The most important thing about software-defined is hardware standardization and virtualization. Only by decoupling hardware and software can the purpose of software-defined be achieved.


Yu Chenjie, senior marketing manager of NXP Semiconductors Greater China, said: "Software-defined cars require chips to have a complete and unified hardware information security mechanism to support OTA and support ASIL-D in functional safety. Previously, the coordination between each ECU was not smooth, and it was difficult to perform real-time OTA. When designing S32Z and S32E this time, NXP took all considerations into consideration and designed S32Z and S32E as a unified functional safety and information security architecture to meet the needs of software definition."


S32Z and S32E support "core-to-pin" hardware virtualization, that is, each application can specify a set of hardware resources when running on a virtual processor, so that other applications have no way to "steal" its resources. This design ensures that each function runs independently.


Cornyn said that the latest S32 products support flexible processor configurations, which can achieve functional safety through lockstep, and can also be unlocked to achieve parallel computing and isolation from each other. "This means that multiple independent applications can run simultaneously on one processor. We call the hardware resources that deploy these applications tenants, and this architecture is also called a 'multi-tenant architecture'."


The S32Z and S32E series support TSN networks and can therefore meet various requirements such as high performance, real-time processing and virtualization.


The future of platformization


Cornyn mentioned that all products on NXP's S32 platform have excellent software compatibility, including processors, storage structures, information security, functional safety, etc., and are also fully compatible in terms of pins.


Supported by comprehensive software and tools and a strong partner ecosystem, customers can accelerate chip evaluation, software development and rapid prototyping by using GreenVIP automotive integration platform software and GreenBox 3 development platform.


The S32Z and S32E processors currently use 16nm technology, and the product roadmap has been planned to 5nm. In addition to the product's own iteration route, NXP has also planned a more detailed platform development roadmap. Currently, NXP's S32 automotive processor platform includes the S32G automotive network processor, S32K general-purpose microcontroller, S32R radar processor, and S32Z and S32E real-time processors. Brian Carlson, global marketing director of NXP Semiconductors Products and Solutions, also revealed that in the future, the S32 platform will also add the V series for visual processing and the M series for motor control.

Reference address:What kind of ECU is needed for software-defined cars?

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